Jaguars
• It’s never a good idea to run away from a large predator such as a big cat. This will make you seem even more like prey, and the animal will almost certainly be able to outrun you.
• Jaguars are South America’s biggest cats. They’re also found in Central America.
• Jaguars used to be quite common, but are becoming increasingly rare, and are now only found in remote regions.
• They vary in size, and can weigh from around 45 kilograms up to 120 kilograms. The biggest are nearly two metres long.
• Out of any big cat, jaguars are least likely to attack people – but it has happened.
• They are good swimmers, and eat Amazon River animals such as caimans and turtles.
• A jaguar’s jaws deliver the most powerful bite of any big cat in the world – it’s capable of biting through a turtle’s shell!
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Petrified with fear, you manage to tear your eyes away from the jaguar, incase it interprets your stare as a threat. You look down at the forest floor and keep still. After a few moments, you shrink back behind a tree. You risk a glance at the animal and see that it hasn’t moved, and still looks as though it could pounce at any moment. You want to run away, but you know that this will make the big cat more likely to see you as prey, and attack. You wait another few moments. Then you cautiously start to back away, very slowly, making sure you are still facing the jaguar. After a while, when you are out of sight of the animal, you hear the big cat moving off in another direction, perhaps in search of easier prey. You’ve been sweating, and this reminds you that you need to find drinking water . . .
If you decide to get your water from bamboo, click here.
If you decide to find a river, click here.
If you decide to get your water from a pool in some tree roots, click here.
Click here for tips on finding water in the rainforest.
Finding Water in the Rainforest
You might think this should be pretty easy – after all, this is a rainforest. But finding water might not be as simple as you think...
• Rivers and streams are obvious sources of water. Remember that fast-flowing water is more likely to be good to drink although it may be more difficult to get to.
• If there are animal tracks around a water source, it’s best not to drink from it. As well as drinking, the animals might well have pooed and weed in it too!
• Water can be obtained from bamboo.
• You can wait for rain and collect it in a container. Rain water should be safe to drink without boiling.
• Don’t drink directly from any water source as there could be small organisms or bacteria in it. There have also been reports of people bending to drink from a pool or river in the Amazon, only to have the tip of their nose nipped off by piranha!
• Stagnant water is to be avoided. Microscopic parasites and germs might have bred in it, and it could be home to small creatures you can barely see.
• Digging a hole near a water source, then waiting for water to filter up into it, will get rid of some of the impurities that might be lurking in the water. You can also use a piece of material as a filter. But it’s always worth boiling water before you drink it – see here for tips on boiling water.
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You cut down a huge bunch of the purple fruit, which look like very fat blueberries or blackcurrants. Tentatively, you try one. It’s absolutely delicious! Surely nothing this tasty could be poisonous as well? You sit down on a log and eat until your stomach stops rumbling.
You were foolish to eat a fruit you didn’t recognise, but luckily for you these berries are not poisonous. They are acai berries, one of the thousands of edible fruits of the Amazon, which include figs, pineapples, passion fruit, avocados and coconuts.
You spot a shrub-like plant not far away. It has round spiky seed cases, a bit like the conker cases on a horse chestnut tree, with what look like mottled beans inside. Do you still feel hungry? Should you try the new plant too?
If you decide you’re not hungry any more, click here.
If you still feel peckish and decide to eat the beans, click here.
Click here for tips on how to test fruit for poison.
Testing Fruits for Poison
Instead of gorging yourself on the berries and hoping for the best, you should have tested for poison in a much more careful and scientific way.
• Don’t eat any plant that has mildew on it.
• Crush the fruit and sniff it. If it smells of almonds or peaches, don’t eat it!
• To be on the safe side, don’t eat any plant with white sap as many of them are poisonous.
• Put some juice on your skin. If it irritates your skin, don’t eat it.
• Try a tiny amount of juice on your lips. If it tingles, or feels sore or unusual in any way, don’t eat the fruit.
• Try a little juice in the corner of your mouth and wait for any reaction. Then try some on your tongue, under your tongue, and finally chew a small piece then spit it out. Wait a few minutes between each stage to make sure you don’t get a reaction.
• If the fruit has passed all of the above tests, swallow a small piece of the fruit. Wait several hours, without eating or drinking anything else. If you feel fine, then the fruit is safe to eat.
• Remember that you’ve only tested one part of the plant. The stems, leaves and roots might not be safe to eat and will need to be tested too.
• Remember, these tests aren’t fool proof!
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Cautiously, you place one foot slightly closer to the snake in order to climb up to a higher branch. The snake opens its huge jaws, lunges towards you then retreats, very quickly. In a panic, you slip and fall, grasping on to the branch closest to the snake.
The snake lunges for you again, and this time it bites! You feel its sharp teeth holding you firmly and painfully by the shoulder. Quickly and purposefully, its body uncoils from the branch and wraps around your body. You feel it start to squeeze . . .
Unfortunately for you, the snake is a constrictor, a green anaconda, which kills its prey by squeezing it tighter and tighter until it can no longer breathe. You are soon dead.
The end.
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Click here to find out more about green anacondas.
Green Anacondas
• The green anaconda is the biggest snake in the world and can measure up to nine metres long and weigh up to 230 kilograms!
• Like other constricting snakes, such as pythons, anacondas don’t have venom. They kill their prey by coiling around it and squeezing, until the animal can’t breathe.
• Green anacondas are good swimmers and live near water. Like crocodiles, they can lie in wait for prey in water with just their eyes and nostrils above the water.
• Anacondas prey on fish, birds, capybara, turtles, caimans, deer and wild pigs. They can even eat large animals whole because their jaws can stretch wide open. After a big meal they might not eat again for months!
• Reticulated pythons, found in Southeast Asia, can be even longer than green anacondas, but their bodies aren’t as thick and heavy.
• Although large anacondas are capable of eating an animal the size of a human, there are very few reports of the creatures attacking people, and no records of fatal attacks.
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There’s a stand of bamboo not far away. Luckily, you know just how to get water from it . . .
Tap the bamboo stems – the ones that sound denser are likely to have water in them. You might even be able to hear the water sloshing about when you shake the stem. Cut the stem and collect the water in a container. It should be safe to drink, but if you want to be extra careful you should boil it. You need to be careful when you make your cut in the bamboo stem, because split bamboo can be extremely
sharp.
You drink until you’re no longer thirsty.
Click here.
Something glints on the forest floor ahead of you. As you get closer you see it’s a pool of water, like a very large puddle, but it seems to be quite deep. You’re hot and clammy and the pool looks so inviting. It’s also a good opportunity for a much-needed wash . . .
If you decide to take a dip in the pool, click here.
If you decide to keep going, click here.
You walk for half an hour or so. Ahead of you, through the trees, it’s getting brighter and brighter and it’s not long before you hear the sound of moving water.
When you find the water’s edge it’s as though a light has been switched on! After the gloom of the thick tree canopy, you blink bleary eyed in the light. The river is wide, sluggish here at the edge of the water, but moving swiftly along in the middle. This must be either the Amazon River itself, or one of its many large tributaries.
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Click here to find out about the amazing Amazon River.
Amazing Amazon River
• The Amazon is the world’s biggest river by volume. It’s in competition with Africa’s Nile River for the World’s Longest River record. This depends on how you measure where the river begins and ends, and there’s a lot of argument about it. The Amazon is at least 6,200 kilometres long. It starts as a trickle in the Andes Mountains of Peru, and flows across South America all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
• The mouth of the Amazon, where it flows into the Atlantic, is 322 kilometres wide. Even if you travel more than 1,500 kilometres upstream (that’s more than the distance between London and Rome!), it’s still more than ten kilometres wide.
• There are no bridges across the Amazon at any point. It’s either too wide, or in the middle of the rainforest. You’ll have to swim or raft across it.
• Every second, 209,000 cubic metres pour into the Atlantic Ocean from the Amazon River.
• The Amazon River has more than a thousand tributaries. Seventeen of them are longer than 1,500 kilometres, making them some of the longest rivers in the world.
• More species of fish live in the Amazon than in any other body of water on Earth!
• Most people of the Amazon live near a river. If you follow a river downstream for long enough, you should find people.
• The largest city along the Amazon River is Manaus in Brazil and is home to 1.7 million people.
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The tangled roots of a huge tree wind around one another at the tree’s base to make what looks like an enormous bird’s nest. There are plenty of small pools of water amongst them. You cup a handful of water. It looks clear and smells fresh. Surely it can only be rainwater?
You’re very thirsty and don’t have any easy way of making a fire. You could go about the laborious process of hunting for dry wood, making a fire and boiling the water but this will take some time and hold you up in your quest to find help. Or you could just drink some. It looks very tempting and you’re in dire need of a drink.
If you decide to boil the water, click here.
If you decide to risk it and drink the water without boiling it, click here.
You collect a couple of handfuls of the beans and eat them. Unfortunately, you have just made a BIG mistake. The plant is a castor oil plant, and its seeds (which look like beans) contain a lethal toxin called ricin.
You carry on walking through the forest, but after a couple of hours you start to feel burning in your mouth and throat. You have to stop. Your stomach hurts, you feel increasingly weak, and you get diarrhoea. You’re dead within a few days.
The end.
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You feel refreshed after your drink of clean water. But your stomach’s rumbling and you spot a plant you think you recognise.
There’s more light where a large tree has fallen, creating a gap in the tree canopy, and there are lots of smaller shrubs growing there, taking advantage of the light. One of them is a small tree with oval-shaped fruits hanging from it. Some of the fruit is orangey-yellow, some green. You are almost sure these are papayas, or paw paws.
But you’re in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, not your local supermarket! Could these be poisonous fruit that look very similar to papayas?
Using your Swiss Army knife you cut open the orange fruit. Inside, the golden flesh smells delicious and leaves your mouth watering. There are black seeds in the middle. This is just how you remember papaya fruit.
It’s a dilemma. You’re starting to feel weak with hunger, you haven’t seen any other edible plants that you recognise, and you’re pretty convinced that these fruits are safe. On the other hand, you haven’t eaten papaya very often. Is it possible that you’re just convincing yourself that these fruit are the same just because you’re so very hungry?
If you decide not to eat the fruit, click here.
If you decide to eat the fruit, click here.
Click here to find out about surviving without food or water.
Surviving Without Food and Water
As long as you have enough water to drink, you can survive without food for quite a long time – probably a month or more – but how long depends on different factors:
• Some people use up energy more quickly than others, so this will make a difference to how long you can survive without eating. It will also depend on how much physical work you’re doing.
• If you’re strong, fit and healthy, and neither very old nor very young, you’ll survive longer.
• Carrying a bit of excess fat will be an advantage too as the extra fat on your body can be used as fuel.
Surviving without water is entirely different. Certain factors make a difference – it will depend on how fit you are, the temperature (which in the Amazon is generally pretty hot), and how much exercise you’re doing. However, you won’t survive for long without a drink whatever the circumstances. After three days without water you’ll be in serious danger of death, and it might be sooner than that if you’re hot and working hard.
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Honestly! Haven’t you been paying any attention at all? It’s never a good idea to drink stagnant water!
Tiny parasites and bacteria can thrive in pools of stagnant water like the one you have very foolishly drunk from, without boiling it first. Water-borne diseases include typhoid, Weil’s disease and schistomiasis, or snail fever.
Unfortunately, you have caught cholera from the contaminated water. You continue on your journey through the rainforest for a while, but it isn’t long before you start to feel ill. Soon you have terrible diarrhoea and vomiting. You’re unable to find enough water to replace the liquids you’re losing. With no chance of getting medical help, you die.
The end.
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You start walking downstream. From the corner of your eye, you think you spot a movement by the water’s edge but when you look, there’s nothing there. There’s a soft splash, and you turn to see bubbles in the water near the shore. What creature might have made them? A prickle of fear runs down your spine, and you start to feel very glad you didn’t take a dip!
The water’s making you so jumpy that you wonder if you should get away from the river and go back into the jungle instead.
If you decide to get away from the water’s edge, click here.
If you decide to continue walking by the river, click here.
You lie in wait again, staring into the water with your spear poised in mid air. Minutes pass and your arm begins to ache.
After half an hour of gazing into the murky water, you decide to wade in and see if you have better luck that way. You try the bottom with your spear - it’s pretty shallow. You wade into the water, your spear in your hand, ready for the first sign of a fish . . .
Electric eels are common in these waters. They’re difficult to
see in muddy water, and, unfortunately, you come into contact with a big one. It releases a huge electric current and you fall into the water. You are dead within moments.
The end.
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Click here to find out more about electric eels.
Electric Eel
• Electric eels are common in the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and their tributaries and swamps. They prefer very slow moving, murky water.
• Although they’re called ‘eels’ and look like eels, electric eels are more closely related to catfish.
• They can be big and grow up to 2.5 metres long and weigh 20 kilograms.
• The eels eat fish, which they find with their electrical receptors then stun with an electric current. They also use electricity to deter large predators.
• The current they produce can be as much as 600 volts. A UK electrical socket carries 240 volts!
• Electric eels can even produce an electrical charge when they’re dead.
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You decide not to eat the fruit, just in case. But, as far as you know, there are no poisonous fish in the Amazon. You could try to catch one and eat that. On the other hand, it might not be worth the energy you use up, especially if you only end up catching a tiddler. After all, you know you can go without food for ages before it becomes life-threatening.
Lost... In the Jungle of Doom Page 2
